


We Three, Kings

by speakmefair



Category: Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Childhood, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Snowball Fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 04:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/935113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three Christmases, four deaths, and the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Three, Kings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [joan_waterhouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joan_waterhouse/gifts).



**i.**

Hours after dark, it begins to snow.

The world turns white and purple with it, light caught in air and a palely imperial glow, and it's midnight, it's the witching hour, when even small boys believe in magic, and everything seems possible.

It even seems possible that they won't be caught, out of their beds and out of their rooms, down by the pond.

"It's not frozen enough to hold us," Henry says.

"It would hold _me_ ," Richard says, and grins, teasing, until Henry uses that added weight, which would do the new and highly tempting-looking ice no good, to knock Richard flat into a snow-covered bush, and give his face a thorough bathing in handfuls of cold soft white. It should be easy, but Richard's sneaky, and wriggles, and puts his feet places that hurt, and Henry ends up flat on his _face_ in the bush, and Richard stuffs snow down the hood of his cloak, which is even funny when you're on the receiving end, and it's a pretty glorious all-out snow-fight, by the end of it.

"It's very odd," Richard says later, when honour has been thoroughly satisfied on both sides, and they can't feel their hands or their noses or their lips anymore. "Snow doesn't look as though it would make you go numb. It should be warm."

"It's white, though. White's cold," Henry says, logically. It's why they paint over it on the chapel walls, he knows. White's a base, it's what lies under things, it's like the stone floors that never heat up, even close to the fire. Of course it's cold. 

He doesn't know until many years later why Richard looks for a moment as though he's going to cry, or why he says a bit frantically, "Sorry, I'm sorry!" or why he leans over and gives Henry a sudden hug, his cold nose pressing into Henry's neck rather uncomfortably, and doesn't let go until Henry hugs him back, not very sure about where to put his hands, because it's one thing to dump his cousin into a snowdrift, but it's quite another thing to suddenly realise that his king is apparently trying out grown-up comfort on him for no reason and in the middle of a bush, and _apologising_ to him.

At the time, it doesn't make sense that Richard says, when they've been caught and brought in and thoroughly scolded; and the Princess Joan has failed not to laugh at their bedraggled states, and sent them to bed, "You can share mine, you know. That might be all right."

"I am," Henry says pointedly, because he is, he's in Richard's bed, and it's much nicer here than in his rooms.

There's no reason for Richard to look even sadder.

Years later, of course, he knows what Richard meant.

_My Lady White._

Richard had thought he was missing the mother he can't really remember. The mother who's cold, and dead, and in the ground.

Richard might, he concedes as a grown man, watching his own children struggle with a loss they're mostly too young to really comprehend, and generally fail to be accepting of it, have been absolutely right.

**

**ii.**

Henry learns that he is absolutely hopeless with anything involving emotions or talking about them one Christmas. He thinks that he is far too old to be finding this a revelation.

It's simply that he used to enjoy the celebrations, and now there's absolutely nothing to celebrate, and he doesn't actually know anyone who'd like to, including most of his family.

It's not that he doesn't _miss_ Mary. It's just that he doesn't think he's grieving in the right way, because look at Richard, who's more frozen than the gardens in his misery. Look at Richard, look at his children.

That's how you grieve.

He wonders if he's too cold a man to do even that properly, and thinks perhaps he might just be too dull.

He thinks of his father, after that, which is never very enjoyable.

Henry would like, he decides, to stop thinking altogether, but apparently snow doesn't help you do that, even when you stand out in it and feel it start to freeze in your hair.

Edward of Norwich, coming through the gardens looking quite amazingly cross, and scratching pine needles out of his hair, is an oddly comforting sight.

"What happened to you?" Henry asks. He manages not to stutter, even with his teeth chattering.

"I found a squirrel," Edward says grumpily. "They seem to be worse than — well, some people who resent mornings — at being woken up."

Henry nods sympathetically. He has no idea why Edward should have wanted to find a squirrel, or why he thinks Henry doesn't _know_ that 'some people' are in fact one person, namely Richard. But at least Edward's not miserable, or grieving, or glaring at him for existing. He's just annoyed with random wildlife, and it's a welcome relief and a bit like not thinking.

"I wanted to get some pine boughs," Edward continues. "Just for my rooms. I think — I think someone should remember we're supposed to be celebrating. Even if we can't do anything about it."

His ears have gone red.

"I don't think," Henry says sternly, "that we should be having this conversation."

Edward stares at him for a moment, and then the red spreads all over his face and neck, and his mouth goes into a thin line and pulls down at the corners.

"No," he says. "Sorry. That was — sorry."

He gives Henry an awkward sort of head-nod, like a puppet-bow instead of a real courtesy one, and goes inside, scattering pine needles in his wake.

It seems, Henry thinks in perplexity, because honestly, he'd only meant that Richard would get _worse_ about it all if he was reminded that there wasn't just his grief in the world at this time of year, that Christmas is his time for receiving not gifts, but absolutely incomprehensible apologies.

**

**iii.**

Henry's first Christmas court is an absolute disaster. He's only got himself to blame, because he's obviously never held one himself, and he doesn't have a queen to hold one for him, and _what was he thinking_ , letting his seven-year-old daughter help him plan things?

No-one's really in the mood for it, anyway, which Henry really should have worked out for himself when he had to issue commands of attendance rather than invitations.

On the other hand, it saved him actually having to refuse to let _Blanche_ send invitations, so there's that small bonus.

He really can't deal with anymore screaming matches with children this week. Or another go-round of the perennial favourite that something is "not _fair_!"

He reasons with himself, after a supper that's possibly colder than it is outside (and that's just the food, there aren't any words for the atmosphere) that he's not trying to escape everyone at all by going for a walk.

And he's certainly not supremely conscious of the fact that the pond he was making his way towards has long since gone, and somehow he'd managed to forget that between the hall and the gardens, and honestly, Christmas should be banned.

It's just that. It's somewhat impossible not to remember all the best things about the dead.

Richard was always at his best when someone else was hurt, and when it snows, Henry thinks he'll always think about two boys and a snow-fight, and an offer to share unconditional love.

Was there ever any other kind, though, he wonders, for Richard?

He realises that he's standing in the middle of his gardens looking at a smooth green space where something used to be, and his court is pretty much like that as well, and he thinks he might actually _hate_ Christmas.

It seems like a horrible kind of personalised fate, when he starts to retrace his steps, that the only one who's bothered to even try to look for him is Edward.

It's hard to believe, looking at him now, that this was ever the man who thought Christmas should be remembered as much as the dead. Henry's only seen that blank, annihilated look of mourning in one other man's eyes before now, and that was Richard.

He didn't like it much then, either.

But he learned something from Richard, something maybe no-one else got from him, and that's how sometimes it doesn't matter whether you should be the one apologising or not, and it's not inappropriate at all for a king to be the one to offer comfort.

So he steps forward, and he puts his arms around Edward, and he holds on until Edward, as awkward as Henry had been, all those years ago, embraces him in return, and he says,

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Edward's tears burn through his clothes, they're hot and feverish on his chilled shoulder, and Henry thinks —

_This is how you grieve. Like this._

He thinks that perhaps Edward's grief is what Richard thought snow would feel like, when you take it in your hands. 

Not the freeze, but the thaw.

Henry doesn't let go for a long time.

And the snow falls.


End file.
